Focus on the Right Infrastructure First: NYC Chief Digital Officer

Srinivasan, who has earlier been the CDO at his alma mater Columbia University, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is on an India-wide tourNeha Alawadhi | ET Bureau | Updated: August 12, 2016, 13:43 IST

NEW DELHI: The newly appointed chief digital officer (CDO) of New York City, Sree Srinivasan, said that while going digital is important, India should first focus on setting up and smoothening out the infrastructure issues that they face.

"There are parts of India where people don't have their own garbage pickup. People are burning garbage and then people ask for 4G (connections). (In that case) you're focused on the wrong G. Until people are not disposing their own garbage, until people are scavenging on their head, that's what you should focus on, but everybody is instead focusing on this side," he told ET.

Srinivasan, who has earlier been the CDO at his alma mater Columbia University, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is on an India-wide tour with Twitter, talking about the importance of using social media and different online platforms effectively. His appointment as the CDO of New York City was tweeted by the mayor Bill de Blasio on August 1: "Welcome, @sree, as NYC's new CDO! And onward to becoming the most tech-friendly, transparent, digitally equitable city in the world."

Srinivasan said his job description was "so clear, so simple and so scary. How do you do all of that?" "Look at the New York City Digital Playbook. It's our roadmap on how New York City (will do digital) - it doesn't mean that's exactly how India needs to be, but somewhere in there is the right way for India to be as well," he said, when asked what India can learn from the US experience of cities going digital.

At a select gathering on Thursday, Srinivasan spoke about how to leverage the best of existing and new social media and online channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google. He said that his endeavour is to use mobile as much as possible, and that he has used his laptop only for about 18 minutes since his new appointment as NYC's CDO.

He also set a kind of a new record when he insisted on doing an entire interview on WhatsApp for a news website a week ago.

One of his takeaways from the India experience is the way customer service is being done through Twitter and how India is using SMS to get around connectivity issues.